I noticed that quote today while browsing the internet and thought I should write my thoughts on it. This is what I've been coming to realize in life. A lot of people are not happy or where they want to be because they are simply working for someone else, have not yet fully expressed themselves or have not yet found their calling. But once you find yourself and build on your character, you will discover that you had great potential all along, and there will always be people out there from all over the world who will be attracted to your personality, endeavors and achievements. I think the key to be successful is to be positive, genuine and original.

Everybody is different and somewhere out there, someone is trying to find their place in their life. People are always searching, learning and discovering new things that could interest them. They might even come across your page one day, notice your content and immediately become a fan. Some people will have absolutely no interest. Others may outright dislike you or your work. Just stay busy on your craft and ignore the haters, for people who spend their time hating on others are not living their own lives to their full potential at their own detriment. They too must find their way. You cannot please everyone. But there will be many others who appreciate your work, and of those people there could always be that one person who likes everything you do and will share your work to all of their connections, who in turn will share to their connections. Trends will always be decided by the people. That is how things become viral, it is when something happens to fill in a gap in the universe that trends so well at the time that it becomes very popular. You never know unless you create and share your best creations, the kind of content that comes from the soul. It's all about creating amazing value and presenting things that have not existed before or have only been thought of as an incomplete, abstract imagining until YOU turn them into a reality. You have the power to manifest your thoughts into the world by utilizing your ideas, senses, emotions, hands and tools.

That will be the attitude I intend to maintain for my portfolio, my site, and my whole online presence. Only I will ever be able to create everything I do in a very specific way. I envision my pages filled with original and interesting concept art, keenly-constructed and optimized low-poly 3D models, and hand-painted textures done in my own unique style.  These will be the key areas of focus in my art and all of which will be done solely by myself, unless I feel like borrowing some inspiration from favourite games, films and other entertainment media, in which case I will put my own unique spin on an existing idea, or try to improve the look of a particular character from an old but gold video game.

We must realize our own unique and intrinsic values. Everyone exists for a reason. Everybody living serves a higher purpose in the grand scheme of things. We simply need to optimize our creative potential to produce the most value for society that we are fully passionate about and share our creations with each other. I believe this is the way forward anyway. There are still too many people working in jobs that don't spark them, jobs that don't motivate them. People who live to work instead of working to live. There are still many young minds herded into a system that does not optimize their unique creative potentials. But I believe that there is always the right kind of person specifically created by cosmic powers, nature, God or what have you, to fulfill a certain role in society and ultimately the world. I believe if everyone can have the opportunity to do what they are good at, what they want and enjoy in a positive and generous way, things will work out for the better. People behave best when they are free to pursue their dreams and happy once their goals are achieved.

A wise man once told me:

If you've also heard this song before, please read this explanation for your own sake. This is one of those issues that affects everyone involved yet nobody wants to discuss:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/3pqhtn/watch_me_whip_is_literally_the_worst_song_i_have/

This song, the name of which I will not mention, has been getting on my nerves a lot lately. I feel like it's basically become a new obstacle between my goals. In order to reach my goals of becoming a better artist, I need to clear my mind of undesirable disturbances that can jeopardize my mental focus, or any distractions that can take up precious time. Unfortunately when it comes to bad but catchy music, all we can do is hear it even when we are not listening to it. It's there, in your mind, and it can reappear at any moment. What was that? Oh you thought about even 1 word from the song, and now the rest of it is playing. Damn it, you thought about that song again immediately after pledging to yourself that you would not. Now let's try to delete that song from your memory and erase it by playing some of your classic favourites instead. Drown out the unfavourable noise and replace it with real music. Put on some tunes that you would rather align with which speaks to who you are or want to be.

It's all about upholding a high standard for yourself as an individual. You should be able to say that something is not right or unfit to be in your life instead of allowing it to propagate. You must be able to choose which music you want to hear because that music will define a part of you. Everything you really do defines a small part of who you are. Even if nobody is in the room but you, your activities will leave a mark on the kind of person you will become. Therefore, it is very important to spend your time wisely and to be exposed to the things you want or like to experience. Remove the clutter from your mind, delete bad habits, set some standards for yourself and focus on your craft, then you will feel like a more meaningful person.

So it's finally come to this. I have decided that it is time I moved on from the free-to-play, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) PC game, "League of Legends" (LoL), to pursue better prospects in the future and to invest my time more effectively from now on. To be honest, that game is for kids now, and it shows in much of their community and player base as far back as the last few years. Attitudes have changed and so have I, and I no longer find as much amusement in it as before. Also, as a responsible adult, it is necessary to prioritize limited resources into meaningful opportunities that will actually yield returns and benefits, especially those that are tangible and real. It no longer makes sense to spend any more time on this game or any other video game unless it is absolutely worth it. I have a very long history playing computer games and want to elaborate all about that, but I will save that material for another time. I still remember what brought me into League of Legends in the first place. I have been playing this game and following the changes to it for quite some time and have much to say about my personal experience. Consider this blog post my journal and summary about the subject, and may whomever reads this learn something from it that they may reflect on if their circumstances involving the game is similar to mine.

Prior to League of Legends, I was into "Defense of the Ancients" (DotA) when it started out originally as a mod for the popular Real-time Strategy (RTS) game, "Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne" (WC3: TFT). I played that during high school quite a bit and learned the mechanics and hotkeys of every hero. My favourite characters were Axe, Pudge, Weaver, Clinkz, Centaur Warrunner, and Techies (I still remember scoring a "Monster Kill" with one lucky detonation of remote mines down the middle lane, and Unreal Tournament '99 was another amazing game by the way). Like most games I get my hands on, I liked to play hard but always keep it fun, friendly and cool. After all, we play games to have fun and not to rage, right?

By mid 2011, I got bored with playing on Summoner's Rift in League of Legends and then Riot Games surprised people with their new game mode called "Dominion". I remember the whole "Expect the Unexpected" marketing thing they pulled back then, when people anticipated a new map called the "Magma Chamber" but received Dominion instead. I did not mind at all because to me, Dominion was basically a much faster and more fun version of the base game. It cut to the chase of the player-versus-player (PVP) interactions and removed the boring requirements of the laning phase for farming and gaining experience--because players would passively receive gold and XP over time--leaving only fast-paced and dynamic gameplay. It was "fast and fun", to quote a former pro League of Legends player. But most of all, I enjoyed Dominion because you could build whatever the heck you wanted and actually win games, unlike in the base game where they try to force people into specific roles with specific builds or else you would risk not only losses but the wrath of your teammates as they accuse you of trolling. I pioneered troll builds like AP Taric (when he used to be a truly outrageous burst champion), AP Corki (my favourite troll build ever), Critcrank (a.k.a Blitzcrit, Flowchart Bot; a critical strike attack damage build for Blitzcrank), AD Mundo, Glass AP Singed, and many more. I once wrote a tier list of the best troll builds for Dominion on the LoL forums way back as a parody to the Dominion community's accepted competitive tier list written by one of the grandfathers of Dominion itself. Many mainstream players may find it silly, but I always looked for ways to keep having fun. That is why we play games, to have fun, remember? Not just to conform to the same old, same old even when it comes to entertainment. Why bring the grind mentality from work into your gaming life? We don't need more of it, especially if it is your precious time (and hence life) being consumed.

On Dominion, I was one of the first players who discovered the "Revive meta", when Revive used to be a summoner spell and not a trinket like it currently is on the map. Back then, when you revived you would gain a boost to your health and an even larger boost to your movement speed that fades off, allowing you to get back into the fight with an advantage when securing capture points which otherwise would have fallen to enemy hands. It was super trolly and fun and I used it on champions like Kassadin, Pantheon, Rammus, Blitzcrank and Zilean to the fullest extent. Within months of Dominion's debut, tournaments appeared with Riot Points (RP) to be won. That was my opportunity to get in-game currency which I could spend on the official skins instead of using custom ones like the ones I made myself, and without ever having to spend a single dime of real money on the game. I still haven't and never will, as I always considered that to be one of my secret and greatest achievements of this free-to-play game. I first participated in the tournaments almost weekly under the Dominion team "Point Defense", a team comprised of Dominion veterans and high-skill level LoL players, where we went on to win most of the early tournaments in spectacular fashion. The idea was that we could have fun playing Dominion while getting easy RP. I kept replays and even uploaded some of the best Dominion moments on YouTube. We inevitably started to lose games when newer teams with other experienced players showed up to challenge us and proved that a strong team composition with clear communication was greater than our band of individually-competent players playing whatever we wanted or what we deemed "overpowered" (OP) at the time. Of course, the community tier list would be updated according to shifts in power of the game's champions. Though, in a few historic cases, Point Defense would later win again by using unconventional tactics such as "backdooring" (a.k.a "Pootering", in honour of the legendary POOTERSS who helped us achieve victory in these epic times) which involved splitting up or designating a sole member to capturing enemy points while most of their forces were focused on the other side of the map. I would later participate as a substitute player for other teams after Point Defense disbanded, while still winning any RP to be won.

Despite the fact that tournaments had been running for a few years since the release of Dominion, a ranked Dominion queue was never implemented by Riot. Some of the main reasons I thought were because it would split the total player base and increase queue times for Summoner's Rift, that Dominion was "too imbalanced" and not "professional" enough to be taken seriously (even though many previously overpowered champions were nerfed over time such that the map actually found more balance than before, and that the map design itself spawned a clone created by another game company), that it was hard to balance champions specifically for Dominion without affecting the other maps, that Dominion lacked "objectives" or "phases" in the game which alleged that there was less impact after each team fight, and that Dominion was "too easy" for anyone to just play and achieve an easy Diamond or similar high rating (which would undervalue the achievements done on ranked Summoner's Rift and Twisted Treeline). By this time it was about 2013 and ideally when I should have quit League of Legends in general, as the highlights of my LoL gaming "career" peaked in 2012 only when Dominion was at its prime in regards to fun. I should have realized that all of the RP I won would later mean nothing, as I would have to quit the game some time in the future.

I used to be very passionate about League of Legends and really saw its potential as an innovative video game in the MOBA genre, in contrast to similar titles like Heroes of Newerth and Defense of the Ancients. I saw the most value first when LoL was released and second when Dominion was released. I created many custom skins for some of the characters as my niche contribution of fan art, especially when the game was still fairly new and the official skins were not as good as they are now. The creators had every opportunity to create really new and exciting maps to keep the gameplay fresh and add new types of objectives, dynamics and units. They experimented with modes like "All Random All Mid" (ARAM), "Ascension" (briefly during the summer of 2014, which was basically just a stripped-down Dominion with no capture points but instead modified to be a strictly team deathmatch-style mode), and a few modifications to Summoner's Rift and ARAM like Butcher's Bridge, Ultra Rapid Fire mode and the Black Market Brawlers mode earlier this year. ARAM in particular became more popular than both Twisted Treeline and Dominion and has since remained as an official map, but personally I did not find that mode to be very interesting as it was too linear with fewer tactics for my taste. I was one of the few who enjoyed the niche appeal of Dominion much more than the other maps, contrary to most players. Overall, it seemed that for the most part, both the community and the company preferred the game to remain based on the core Summoner's Rift experience instead of being more like Warcraft III in its support for vastly different game modes. The once idealistic outlook I had with League of Legends was disillusioned by the status quo.

Despite the gradual drop in fun and general neglect by its creators, League of Legends: Dominion was still an amusing multiplayer game option which was allowed to remain a part of the very well-established free-to-play game. A good number of RP and unlocked champion skins were still sitting in my account. I had met many online LoL friends, most of whom were around the same skill level as mine and I wanted to keep in touch. I tried other champions and troll builds that I did not try before in attempt to have fun, but I was just fooling myself. Perhaps it might be a better idea to play the other maps again. Maybe I had to try hard and stop trolling so much and just play the game like the creators intended. I accepted this fact by playing ranked 3v3's on the Twisted Treeline map as an easier and quicker way to move up the ladder and get some seasonal rewards (which usually meant earning a "Victorious" skin and a shiny banner under your game client profile). I earned Platinum in Seasons 1-3, and Diamond in Season 4 (and soon Season 5 at the time of this writing), which simply means that I was ranked in the top 1% of players on the continent. I wanted to help the rest of the team who contributed to achieving Diamond keep their badge with just a few more games before the inevitable uninstallation of League of Legends. By this point I had accepted that my time with the game was coming to an end. It seemed that the greatest challenge was not in winning any more games, but by simply being able to not play them any longer. The real victory was being able to walk away.

Tl;dr: League of Legends was fun while it lasted and has survived for a long time as my go-to multiplayer PC game, succeeding Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne for that purpose. I was passionate about LoL which led me to creating the interesting custom skins on my portfolio, and to discover alternative methods of playing the game in order to keep having fun. I earned all my RP from Dominion tournaments, mostly achieved by trolling and staying positive, and never once using my credit card to purchase RP, but spent almost 6 years of my spare time playing League of Legends which I knowingly overspent in retrospect. I learned my lesson and will now focus my time more on the things that matter in real life, such as my own original artistic creations instead. Perhaps then my time will come, and I will get to be the next trendsetter when it comes to innovative video games...